Alice in Fragments
by eden alice
Summary: 'If she had been expecting anything it defiantly would not be this.' Carla and Leanne in a bar...
1. Chapter 1

Alice in Fragments

If she had been expecting anything, and she wasn't, she had been working very hard on being as blank as possible; it defiantly would not be this. Carla had walked and walked and walked to a strange bar she had never heard of before. It was dingy and dark and loud and she was probably placing herself in danger but she was too drunk to care. And maybe, just a small part of her was looking for trouble because she had already failed at killing herself. But it was a fitting place and they left her well alone in a dark corner with a bottle of vodka and a shot glass.

"Thought red wine was your way to oblivion." It was a statement rather than a question from a familiar yet surprising voice.

Carla's neck no longer seemed to contain the correct muscles and her head lolled clumsily as she slowly broke her concentration away from watching the light catch through the glass of the bottle. She squinted in an attempt to focus her spinning vision.

An almost childlike smiled broke out across her faintly tear stained face. She let her head fall back against the padded headrest when her vision cleared enough that she could make out her companion.

"Lee." She slurred feeling unstoppable and already gone all at once.

The nickname brought a flash of a man who had left her a long time ago. She needed another drink.

"Well you're coherent enough but I'm starting to think you're at war with your liver." Her friend, ex friend, enemy replied wryly.

It had been unconscious at first, but wine remained her of the past and the woman that was snatched away from her. Reminded her of dark blood running down the drain of a shower in the referral centre while she shook and tried not to vomit. Vodka was deceptively clear and bitterly unpleasant but effective. Drinking had become less about please and need and more about desperation. She had lost everything she was besides a growing addiction that was her only chance of forgetting.

She remembered the distress of having her stomach pumped and faintly wondered how she could still stomach the stuff and how she was lucky (unlucky) her liver had not given out by now.

"Yeah well a change is as good as a holiday." She sung the nonsense statement. Her coordination lacking as she tried to pour yet another glass full only for most of the sticky liquid to end up on her hand.

"What are ya doing here Leanne?" She asked licking the side of her thumb clean, wearily rocking in her seat.

She regarded the woman with surprisingly sharp yet watery eyes. Typical Leanne in a sensible cardigan and hair a little too close to middle-aged and bland. Once upon a time this woman looked like an entirely different woman and Carla wondered if she had really changed or was just trying to fool the world or herself.

They both looked out of place. Leanne too soft and wide eyed for a place filled with lowlifes and hard drinkers. Carla too vulnerable but at least she was wearing leather, at least she was all sharp angles, all; fuck off and leave me alone to destroy what's left of my life. Any reason for Leanne to find herself in the same place as her ex best friend seemed beyond ridiculous and yet she didn't have the energy to laugh.

"Does it really matter?" Leanne raised an eyebrow, her expression a stony mix of disgust and empathy.

Her hair fell in a dark curtain around her face as Carla rested her chin against her palms, her elbows on the table. "No love, I don't suppose it does."


	2. Chapter 2

Leanne did not seem to want to let go of the stem of her wine glass, she twisted it absently but her white wine went largely untouched. There was nothing like watching someone try to drown themselves in alcohol to cause enough of a headache to make her want to avoid the stuff herself. It was getting irritating.

Sometimes it was like dealing with children, or perhaps it was worse, these people were selfish in a way only an adult could be. Sometimes she thought Simon was the only reason she would still put herself through it when she forgot what it was like to be so in love with Peter.

Carla had not complained when she had sat across from her. She had smiled knowingly before her head and shoulders dropped like a puppet with its strings cut as she poured herself anther drink.

It was ridiculous that she'd put herself into a place that made her feel unsafe because of a woman she wanted to hate. She had been on her way home from a few chores and had happened to recognise the back of a dark head of hair and after a long moment of deliberation she had followed her.

It was all so coincidental and she had no idea what she had set out to do. Part of her wanted to launch herself at the woman who had almost taken away the mother she had only just found, another wanted to shake her for not being strong enough, for making Peter care. And then another part wanted to be a one woman intervention. Wanted to be critical and superior and help because even now, even after falling so far, Carla Connor seemed to have everything Leanne was so desperate to keep.

The designer wardrobe, the classic film star good looks, her own business and that impossibly sharp tongue. That would never be Leanne no matter how much she had tried. Sitting in that dramatic flat making believe at grown up dinner parties with the Connor's, she had felt like a fake. And she had been once Paul had discovered her secret and it all had fallen apart.

Only now she had a husband, a supposed family business and a clever little boy she considered her own. She had never felt love so overwhelming till the first time Simon had called her 'mum'.

And now Carla threatened to take that away from her too. The other woman threatened to devour it all as she imploded. It was like she was no longer the woman Leanne had once tried to emulate; now the sum of her was nothing more than every disease and trauma that had caused the hollowness Leanne catches in her eyes.

She was so fucking angry with her so called friend, or she tried to be. Tried to put all the guilt and paranoia and sleepless night on her stylish shoulders because she had been there and she had been bad and desperate. Trouble was Leanne knew she was guilty of the same even though she was trying so hard to be better.

Maybe she was sat silently watching the slumped form of her ex friend because she had let her down the first time. She had been so wrapped up in the dilemma that had been her affair that she had missed the warning signs. She lived with a recovering alcoholic for god sake. It was only now she saw a frightening similarity between her supposed friend and husband. Maybe her selfishness had pushed the volatile pair together. Peter should have told her, she could have helped, she should have seen through the paper thin lies.

Officially they were still friends. They had made up like little girls and cried about how they would be better friends. After all the arguments and barely held tension she could not remember an official breakup.

She was disgusted by Frank. Hated how he stole her righteous anger and made the situation all the more complicated. She couldn't despise a rape victim and yet one vile attack did not take away all the harm Carla had caused.

"You know if you wait long enough I could probably just pass out and choke on my own vomit."

Leanne glances up at Carla in confusion. The other woman's voice steady and eyebrows raised but there was a defeated blankness in the hollowness of her cheeks like the expression Leanne had seen in the devastating days after she had been assaulted.

"What?" She asked snapping a little in irritation.

"Just in case you're sitting there plotting my murder. I reckon I can handle it myself if ya got places to be."

Her knees contacted painfully with the table as Leanne shifted in anger to that she was leaning closer to Carla, looking the other woman directly in the eye.

"Don't you do that. Not to me." She hissed with cold anger.

Falling out did not stop her chest constricting and the blind panic at the sight of Carla's pale body. The memory of her husband cradling the other woman in desperation did nothing to make the memory any less painful. She had always hated the unflinching way Carla could turn her worst nightmare in to a joke that no one knew how to respond to. Then she could not help but compare it to her husbands own sarcasm and wondered if they had sat night after night cruelly laughing at her.

She had every right to walk away and yet she could not bring herself to move.

"Please Leanne; just tell me what you want. I'm too tired for the same old arguments. Just tell me." Carla slurred her words and frowned a little seemingly uncaring at her own pleading. Her head feel back against the headrest and it was an obvious drunken way of breaking eye contact. Her hand still clutching her half empty bottle.

"One suicide attempt not enough for you is it? Only you couldn't take the shame of an overdose but you're happy enough to make us watch as you slowly drink your self to death. You're a lot of things Carla but I've never realised you are a coward." She said simply watching for some sort of a reaction.

"Oh" Carla chuckled, pushing the heels of her hands against her closed eyes and somehow flopped deeper into the chair. "What can I say? I like to keep you guessing."

She blindly patted the table in a clumsily attempt at finding her drink. "I need you to go away now Lee." She whispered in a long exhalation.

But Leanne had finally stopped thinking. Instinctively she reached out and wrapped her own fingers around Carla's, effectively tethering the bottle to the table. "No. What you need is to put that stuff down."


End file.
